A coach at a closed school on an inset day
You run home to school contracts for several schools: two secondary schools directly, some routes for the council, and a couple of independent schools with their own buses. Each has its own term dates. Inset days differ. One school finishes early on the last Friday of term. Another changes its start time for the exam period. A council route gained two pupils and a new stop last week.
On Monday morning, a driver arrives at a school car park at quarter past eight to find the gates closed. It is an inset day for that school only. The email from the school's business manager came in September and is in the inbox of someone who has since left.
Contract dates live in emails, and duties are built from memory
The repeating nature of school work hides its complexity. Each route runs on its school's days, not on your calendar, and changes arrive by email throughout the year.
- Term dates and inset days arrive as PDFs or emails from each school.
- Early finishes and exam changes are sent close to the day.
- Route changes (new stops, new pupils, timing changes) come from the school or the council.
- Duties are rolled forward week to week, so missed changes carry on.
- Drivers keep their own notes about stops and times.
Missed changes waste duties and upset schools
A coach at a closed school is a wasted driver duty, and one who could have been doing private hire. A coach arriving at the normal time on an early finish day leaves pupils waiting, and schools and parents notice. A new stop not passed to the driver means a pupil left at the roadside, which is the kind of event that puts a contract at risk.
The office also spends time each week double-checking the school calendar against the duties, and still misses things.
A contract calendar that produces the daily duties
We build a school contract calendar that drives the daily duties.
- Each school is set up with its term dates, inset days, early finishes and any special days for the year. Dates sent as PDFs or emails are read by an extraction step and checked by a person before they are saved.
- Each route has its stops, times, vehicle size and pupils or passenger count if you hold them, with a version history when anything changes.
- The calendar creates the duties for each school day: which routes run, at what times, with which vehicle size. No route runs on a day the school is closed.
- Changes such as an early finish create a changed duty for that day and alert the planner and the driver.
- Schools and the council can send changes to a dedicated address, where they are logged and turned into tasks for the office, so nothing depends on one person's inbox.
- Drivers see their route with current stops and times on their phone, with changes highlighted.
| Change from the school | What happens |
|---|---|
| Inset day | Route does not run, duty freed for other work |
| Early finish | Afternoon duty moves, driver told |
| New stop | Route updated, driver sees it highlighted |
| Exam timetable | Changed times for the affected days |
| Next year's term dates | Loaded and checked once |
A term with the calendar
In September the office loads the year's dates for each school. On the Monday of the inset day, the route simply does not appear, and the driver and vehicle are available for the day trip that came in on Friday. When a school emails about an early finish on the last day of term, the change is logged, the afternoon duty moves, and the driver sees it the day before.
When the council adds a stop to a route, the new stop and time appear on the driver's route sheet, marked as new, and the office knows the driver has seen it.
At the end of the year, the calendar also shows how many days each route ran, which is useful when checking what you invoice under each contract.
Is school contract admin catching you out?
- Term dates and inset days are kept in emails and PDFs.
- A coach has turned up to a closed school.
- Early finishes have been missed.
- Route changes reach drivers by word of mouth.
- Duties are rolled forward each week without checking the school calendar.